The Weekly Standard doesn't think BP loves oil nearly enough.

If you read this Weekly Standard article, you might think it a shocking expose -- shocking, because it's in the Weekly Standard -- of BP's longstanding laxness with regards to safety issues. But what develops is something else entirely: An exercise in schadenfreude that a company that tried so hard to brand itself as "green" has enmeshed itself in one of history's more notorious environmental disasters.

The game is given away when describing Oberon Houston, an engineer who left the company a few years back after narrowly avoiding death on a BP rig. Andrew Wilson's article presents a litany of safety-related reasons for Houston's departure, but tacks this on:

And finally, he told me over the course of several interviews, he was distressed by an abundance of rhetoric—coming from the CEO—about BP going “beyond petroleum” and joining the environmental activists in campaigning for reduced carbon emissions. “To me and everyone I knew, it didn’t make any sense. We were a petroleum company. That wasn’t going to change any time soon, and it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, either. All the talk about windmills and solar power was just PR and a lot of nonsense.”

In short, Houston no longer trusted the company to do the right thing.

The article hints that BP's "greenwashing" campaign is linked to its atrocious safety practices, but never really makes the case. (And couldn't, unless BP's PR department ran the company's maintenance operations.) Instead, what the piece reveals is the extent to which "oil now! oil forever!" might be more deeply embedded in conservative ideology than actual free-market capitalism. It seems not to matter that BP undertook its environmentally friendly push in order to sell more oil; all that matters -- and is worthy of contempt -- is that BP paid any deference at all, even rhetorically, to the environmental movement. That is the sin that cannot be forgiven. At least, not now that BP's sins can be hung on a Democratic president.

Late in the piece, Wilson mocks BP for paying scientists at Berkeley to research energy alternatives:

Thanks to BP sponsorship, 300 researchers in white lab coats at Berkeley are busily searching for ways to make green fuels that will reduce our dependence on oil. In 2007, BP set up the Energy Biosciences Institute, saying it would spend $500 million over the next ten years to support research into plant-based fuels at Berkeley and two other universities. This is the largest corporate donation ever for university research.

Broken down, though, that amounts to $12.5 million per quarter over the next 10 years -- barely a dent in the company's earnings. Even then, it doesn't seem to occur to Wilson that an energy company might consider the cost a prudent bit of R&D -- if not for a post-oil future, then at least to cater to the segment of the market that would rather avoid oil.

Like I said, though, market considerations don't really matter here. Any acknowledgement that massive oil consumption might have a downside, or that alternative energy sources might even be possible or even necessary, is heresy. Conservatives pride themselves on their realism about oil: It's cheap and it's available and we're not going to abandon it because of those qualities. There's something to that argument. But the contempt for BP -- as revealed in the Weekly Standard -- reveals that there's more than admirable realism at work here. It's calcified, closed-minded ideology.

Will the BP oil disaster destroy Obama's presidency?

Well, I'm unusually harsh about President Obama in this week's column for Scripps:

President Obama might make a great senator someday.

That's the thought that occurred Tuesday night as Obama vaguely described a "set of principles" that would set America on course toward its energy future -- even as he lamely admitted to being "unsure exactly what that (future) looks like." Senators have the luxury of noodling around with legislation, haggling and negotiating until a bill comes into shape. Presidents, on the other hand, are supposed to offer leadership -- a concrete plan of action.

So far, Obama is failing the test.

Unfortunately, there's nothing new to this. Obama spent the first year of his presidency being overly vague about what he would and wouldn't accept in a health-reform bill. The result? Senators took the lead, spending months in confusing and nearly fruitless negotiations while an antsy public grew increasingly angry.

There's nothing technically wrong with this: Congress is, after all, a co-equal branch of government. But Obama's style of vague direction-setting raises two unsettling possibilities about his presidency. A: He lacks confidence in his agenda, so he won't commit to specifics that can be publicly rejected. B: He doesn't actually have an agenda.

Back in 2008, many liberals backed Obama because they felt Republicans would offer obstinate, conspiracy-mongering obstruction to a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency. Turns out they did that anyway. Clinton, at least, might've pursued her agenda with more tenacity -- and Obama might've made a loyal foot soldier, happily engaged in the Senate's give-and-take. Instead, he's meandering into the future. The oil spill isn't undoing Obama's presidency; he's doing fine at that on his own.

Michael Smerconish's crazy, unfactual sympathy for BP and the oil spill

Michael Smerconish isn't joining a boycott of BP -- because if the boycott succeeds, maybe BP will go out of business. And if they go out of business, who will provide the money and expertise to fix the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

I intend to drive out of my way to fill up at a BP pump.

Why? Because it's imperative that the company doesn't tap out before plugging the leak and cleaning up the tens of millions of gallons of crude oil marring the Gulf of Mexico.

If BP goes under before either of those tasks is complete - or if the company can't afford to complete them itself - the federal government will be sucked into picking up the tab. Or worse, actually taking the lead in trying to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf and mop up the mess.

Here's the thing: the mess is proving very costly to BP -- both in terms of its stock market value and in terms of how much it's spending. And yet those enormous costs pale in comparison to how much money BP still has left over. Tuesday's New York Times:

One analyst calculated that in a worst-case scenario, BP’s cleanup liability would be around $14 billion, which would account for the entire loss of all fishing and tourism revenues for coastal states closest to the spill, said Kevin Book, a managing director at ClearView Energy Partners. Even then, Mr. Book said, the market overreacted, and BP can easily handle the cleanup bill.

BP remains a formidable corporation, with the ability to withstand penalties that would easily bankrupt most companies. On April 26, a few days after the Deepwater Horizon rig that it had rented from Transocean sank, BP reported first-quarter profits of $6.2 billion. Because of its considerable profits and size, it does not buy outside insurance for such disasters.

The market drop means that while BP is not at risk of bankruptcy, the crisis could potentially turn it into a takeover target if the slide continues.

So the worst that can happen to BP right now -- aside from the unlikely scenario of the federal government deciding to take it over -- is that some other capitalist will take the company over, not that the company will go under. And honestly: Why should I care if some other Richie Rich is making profits and assuming liability for the oil spill? It's too bad Michael Smerconish didn't decide to use some actual facts in his column, instead of indulging in baseless speculation.

Should BP end offshore oil drilling?

That's the topic of my Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk this week -- and a trickier topic than usual. Because I want the answer to the above question to be "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!" But given the realities of American politics and the country's energy consumption, it seems impossible to end offshore drilling entirely.

So my answer? Regulate the hell out of the industry, and rigorously enforce those regulations.

It would be nice if we could unilaterally end offshore oil drilling. Nobody likes to see the oily bird carcasses washing up on beaches, nor the plaintive looks in the eyes of suddenly idled Louisiana fishermen. The widespread damage being done right now in the Gulf of Mexico should be intolerable.

But we will tolerate it. We have to. America's energy demands are simply too great to give it up - our politicians are not going to ask us to sacrifice our comfortable lifestyles; we won't let them in any case - and the country isn't anywhere close to ready to switch over to "alternative" energy sources like wind and solar to pick up the slack.

If some environmentalists are ready to declare a moratorium without ready alternatives, however, drilling enthusiasts can be much too cavalier about the safety of offshore drilling. Large-scale energy production of any sort is almost always a complicated and dangerous proposition, whether at Chernobyl or in the Atlantic Ocean. Disasters - the devastation of whole swaths of the planet - are inevitable. So regulations on drilling should be tight, and rigorously enforced.

That hasn't been the case. The New York Times reported that the federal government gave permission to dozens of oil companies - including BP - to drill offshore even though they hadn't completed "required" environmental reviews. That's inexcusable.

We rely on oil energy because, for now, we have to. However, that's no reason to let the oil companies essentially regulate themselves. Getting rigorous about the rules and their enforcement will probably make energy a little more expensive for all of us, but the cost will be necessary. Our own ability to survive on the planet depends upon it.

Drill, baby, drill!

Told of President Obama's decision to greatly expand offshore drilling, my wife this morning sighed and said: "He has a whole bunch of Republican in him."

Republicans surely won't agree. And it's important to remember that he told us he would do this two years ago:

Obama said Friday that he would be willing to compromise on his position against offshore oil drilling if it were part of a more overarching strategy to lower energy costs.

"My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices," Obama told The Palm Beach Post early into a two-day swing through Florida.

The problem, from my perspective,is that he's doing this before there's a comprehensive energy policy in place. It's an offering in hopes of getting one. From the NYT today:

The proposal is intended to reduce dependence on oil imports, generate revenue from the sale of offshore leases and help win political support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation.

But while Mr. Obama has staked out middle ground on other environmental matters — supporting nuclear power, for example — the sheer breadth of the offshore drilling decision will take some of his supporters aback. And it is no sure thing that it will win support for a climate bill from undecided senators close to the oil industry, like Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, or Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana.

From the perspective of getting a deal on energy and climate legislation, keeping this move in Obama's back pocket for negotiations might've been a little better and he might've been able to get his environmental supporters to understand a little bit. As it is, this decision looks like he's giving away the candy store without any promise of a return.